Bouncing Back Into The Nest

No, I’m not done editing the book. Not by a long shot. What I am done with is whining about it. So, step back. I’m climbing back into the saddle and gonna start blabbing again. So there.

Saw an interesting stat the other day. Interesting as in, I started sweating and my heartbeat raced up into the danger levels and I started swaying back and forth as my lungs labored to bring oxygen to my shock-starved brain. Yeah, that kind of interesting.

The Class of 2008, born during the historic bull market that closed the past century, reached a dubious distinction last year: More than a million of the college graduates have gone back home.

The number of 26-year-olds living with parents has jumped almost 46 percent since 2007, according to Census Bureau data compiled by the University of Minnesota Population Center. Last year, the number of 18- to 30-year-olds living with their parents grew to 20.7 million, a 3.9 percent gain from 2010.

The figures underscore the difficulty that millions of young people have had in finding jobs and starting careers in the U.S. following the longest recession since the Great Depression. About a quarter of American adults between the ages of 18 and 30 now live with parents, while intergenerational households have reached the highest level in more than 50 years.

If you’re smart, you’ll just hit that website link there and try to only read the interesting bits about the kids moving home and try to avoid the clumsy politicking the writer gets into there.

Anyway, I’m not sure this is a good trend. I mean, yeah, I think it’s good that people can have a relationship with their parents that extends after high school, but I think it’s all too easy to fall back into old habits and patterns of rebellious teen and dictatorial parents. I know when Sarcasmo went off to try his hand at college and then returned home, it was an even bigger kerfluffle than before. He kept insisting that he be treated as an adult and could do what he wanted when he wanted.

That did not turn out well. And, it could be that we did not have a unique experience.

About a third of adults 18 to 34 who live with a parent said the move has been good for the relationship, according to a March report by the Pew Research Center’s Social and Demographic Trends Project in Washington. Only 18 percent said the move had caused relationships with their parents to deteriorate.

More than 60 percent of adults 25 to 34 know friends or family members who have moved back with their parents in the past few years because of economic conditions, according to the Pew report. It cited a December telephone poll of 2,048 adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

Still, economic realities might just be crashing into issues of privacy and autonomy. That is, if your young dude can’t find a job, there might be no better place to go than home. Though, one thing I’m quite certain of, should we get another boomerang kid, just like we did before, we’re going to insist on getting paid a rent.

We love our boys and want them to have a good life, but we need to realize that we as parents have lives of our own as well.